Question

My menu renders the “selected” array as options. Then when an item is selected it renders it’s branches as the new options.

To keep track of traversal I create an array called select. So if someone picked the 3rd option then the 1st option then the 6th option, select = [3,1,6]

That’s easy enough just pushing the index into the array, my question is how can I use this array to create a reference to the tree?

If select is [3,1,6] I want create a function that results in a reference to tree[3][1][6] also allowing me to traverse backwards by clipping off the last value of the array.

(in coffeescript)

tree:
    name: 'name1'
    branches:[
        name: 'name2'
        branches: [
            name: 'name3'
            branches: [
                name: 'name4'
                branches:[]
            ,
                name: 'name5'
                branches:[]
            ,
                name: 'name6'
                branches:[]
            ]
        ]
    ]

current = tree

#when clicked

$('.menu li').on 'click', ()->
    select.push($(this).index())

    for value in select
         current = current+'['+value+']'

#this results in a string, not an actual reference to the tree.

Answer 1

If I understand correctly what you need, changing the last 2 lines with the following should do the trick:

current = tree
for value in select
    current = current['branches'][value]